{Stopping It. Chapter 2}
Oct. 27th, 2008 02:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ardensreginaTitle: Stopping It
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lois, probably others later
Rating: We'll say T for brief language and violence
Spoilers: through 8x05, Committed.
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville or Superman or these characters, I'm not making any money here, etc. etc.
Summary: Clark and Lois have to say the world, but to do it they'll need to confront their future together.
Note: Thank you so much to everyone who commented on chapter one. I wasn't expected all that much when I posted it and it's really great to know that people are enjoying it so far. I'm sorry this chapter is a little delayed, but I've been really busy this week. Since I'm a student, I don't know if I'll be able to promise really quick updates, but I'll do my best to at least keep there from being huge gaps between updates.
This chapter was a little more difficult for me to write because I seem to have wandered straight into a logistical nightmare that won't be going away if I continue to follow my plan for this story (such as it is). But I hope the writing has suffered any for it. And thanks again to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
svgurl for betaing this. :D
Enjoy!
Chapter 2
The barn finally faded back into view.
“What the hell was that, Smallville?” Lois demanded. She had no idea what had just happened so she figured Clark must. He was, after all, the one with the cupboard full of weird stuff like the disc she was still holding in her hand.
But he just looked at her with just as confused an expression on his face as the one on hers. “I have no idea.”
“I mean—what was that? One minute we’re standing in your loft and the next we’re in the middle of Metropolis and everyone is dead and then we’re in some weird tunnel of light and some creepy voice is talking—” Clark chucked at that succinct summation of Jor-El. “What?” she demanded sharply
Clark shook his head, not sure if he wanted to go there. But it was all about to come out one way or another. “Nothing,” he said “it’s just that that was my father.”
“Your father?” Lois was looking at him like he had two heads. “Clark…I don’t know exactly how to put this delicately, but…your father’s—well, he’s dead.”
Clark’s grin was both wry and sad. “No, no. This is my other dead father.”
Lois stared at him blankly, as if to say Smallville, you have clearly lost it. Clark thought that maybe they better sit down. He motioned to the couch and they both sat. Lois looked at Clark expectantly; she knew he was about to come clean.
Clark hesitated and took a deep breath. “Okay. Well…I guess that if you saw inside that cupboard you know that there’s a lot more going on around here than I’ve let you in on.” Lois nodded, her eyes never leaving his. She could tell he was uncomfortable. Without thinking about it, she reached over and took his hand, silently telling him that it alright to go on.
Unable to bring himself to actually look her in the eye as he said this—why was it so hard to come out with this? He hadn’t had this issue with Chloe or Pete or even Lana—Clark fixed his gaze on his lap and continued. “I’m not from around here, Lois.” He glanced up at her; she looked nonplussed. “I mean, I’m not from this planet, I’m not from this galaxy…I’m from a planet called Krypton.” Now he looked fully up into her eyes. Obviously, that was not at all what she was expecting hear. She looked a little startled but squeezed his hand encouragingly and he went on. “I came with the meteors. Or the meteors came with me. The first time.”
“Why?” She sounded shocked and confused, but she was holding it together surprisingly well.
“Krypton’s gone now. It blew up. I’m all that’s left of it. My father—that voice—he sent me here so I wouldn’t die with the rest of them.”
“Oh my God. Clark…”
“There’s more.” He didn’t need her to feel sorry for him; that’s not what this was about. He just needed to get through this, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish if she started getting all apologetic. “I can… do things.”
He was about to go on to explain about his abilities, but it looked like the universe had different plans for Lois and Clark.
A couple was bounding up the stairs, fully engrossed in each other and presumably getting to the couch which Lois and Clark were currently sitting on. At first, Clark couldn’t figure out what the hell it was they were doing in his barn. Then he realized. The couple who had yet to notice Lois and Clark’s presence were in fact Lois and Clark themselves. He just stared, not quite believing what he was seeing, unable to get the words out to alert them to the fact that they were not alone.
The currently-on-the-verge-of-copulating version of Lois and Clark finally noticed that the loft was already occupied. Lois screamed. Both of them.
For a minute, the two pairs just stared at each other in complete shock.
“What the hell are you doing in my barn?” the new Clark demanded.
“Well, I thought it was my barn” his counterpart answered, then added as he looked around, “it is my barn!” He was just so perplexed. It was by far the weirdest experience he had ever had. And he was Clark Kent; he’d had a lot of weird experiences. Trying to make sense out of it all, he asked dumbly “who are you?”
“I’m Clark Kent.”
“Well, you can’t be. Because I’m Clark Kent.” But it was apparent just by looking at them that somehow they were both Clark Kent. There was a steady stream of light coming in from the widow, proving that the phantom that had impersonated Clark could not have made a return visit. And if they weren’t impervious to pain they’d have both been getting raging headaches right about then.
But Lois was looking at her own counterpart. Her hair reached only just below the shoulders, not the way she was accustomed to wearing it. “What did you do to your hair?”
“What’d you mean?” her counterpart asked, clearly just as confused.
“It’s too short.”
The second Clark glanced sharply at the Lois he hadn’t entered with. A few pieces seemed to click. “What year is it?” he asked.
Lois was incredulous. “What kind of a question is that? It’s 2008, obviously.”
“No it isn’t.” the newer Lois seemed to be catching on to whatever her Clark was getting at. “It’s 2010.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” the Lois who had woken up that morning in 2008 exclaimed. “First we get transported to Metropolis and it’s some weird vision of the end of the world, then we’re sent into the future? This is ridiculous!”
But her contemporary Clark shook his head. “I think we just never went all the way back to where we came from originally” he posited.
“What are you guys talking about?” 2010’s Clark asked. “You were transported to the end of the world in Metropolis?”
“We were standing in this loft, well, in 2008,” the other Clark explained. “Lois was holding the key and then I touched it too and suddenly we’re in Metropolis and everyone’s dead. And I mean everyone. At first I didn’t realize that we’d time traveled but I’ve just remembered—there was a copy of the Planet on the street. It said it was April 23, 2037. And Lex was there. But it wasn’t Lex, it was Zod; he must have been possessing Lex again.”
“So,” Lois was trying to make sense of all the new information she had been bombarded with in the last ten minutes, “we just traveled in time.”
Her Clark looked a little uncomfortable. “I mean, I guess so. Either that, or someone is playing a very bad, very elaborate trick on us.”
“So you were in Metropolis in 2037 and now you’re here in Smallville 2010 but ten minutes ago you were here in 2008?” the other Clark clarified.
“Well—first we were in the cave. Jor-El said we had to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Well, all of us dying, I guess. Zod taking over the world. You know, the usual.”
The Lois of 2010 thought maybe the two Clark’s better figure this out by themselves, this was a little out of the Loises’ jurisdiction. “Hey, Lois, why don’t we let them talk this over, okay? Are you hungry?”
The other Lois was new at this, but could see that she definitely wasn’t helping here. Besides, who could pass up the opportunity to have a heart to heart with themselves from the future? “Yeah, okay.” The two women left the loft, leaving Clark and Clark by themselves.
For a minute, they just stared at each other; neither quite being able to get over how weird this was for them.
“So,” the younger Clark started, “you and Lois?”
“Yeah, we’ve been dating for about six months now.”
“Wow.”
“Oh, come on. I know you’ve thought about it.”
“Well, yeah. But not seriously, I mean—it’s Lois.”
“She likes you too, you know.”
Clark smiled, remembering the week before with the psycho and the lie detector and Lois’ lame attempt to get out of her admission later. “I know. So she knows?”
“About the alien thing? Yeah. I told her last year.”
“Last year? But I was just in the middle of explaining things to her a minute ago before we were, uh, interrupted.”
“So, you guys are like…changing history?”
“Well, do remember going to 2037 two years ago? Besides, I think changing history’s the whole point. Jor-El said we had to ‘stop it.’ That would be a change, right?
“This is really weird, huh?”
“Really weird.”
They needed to get over the strangeness of it all. There was obviously something wrong going on here and they needed to fix it. The older Clark started off. “Okay, so what exactly did Jor-El say?”
“Just that Lois and I had to stop it. But how are we supposed to stop something that’s thirty years in the future?”
“By warning me. So I’ll know what’s coming. So I can stop it.”
The younger Clark was a little disappointed by this. The version of himself standing before him was slightly older and slightly more experienced and he had Lois Lane. And now this new version of himself was going to take over a mission that Jor-El had at first given to him. He was jealous of himself. This wasn’t going to get any less weird any time soon, was it? Clark looked at his older self. It was the same face and the same clothes but somehow this guy was more self-assured. He had more of a presence. Was it Lois that had caused this change? “No,” he said, “Jor-El stepped in a brought me here. He said we had to stop it. Lois and me. Not you. There has to be something more to it.”
The other Clark looked at him like he knew exactly what was going on in his head. And Clark figured he probably had a pretty good idea.
+ + +
Meanwhile, Lois Lane was getting to know Lois Lane.
“I can’t get over how weird this is!” The older woman gushed. “I mean, you’re me! And I’m you! But you’re me from like a year and a half ago!” A thought struck her. “What story are you working on?”
“I’m about to go on assignment in Lubbock in a few days. Or, you know. I was. Now I’m here, so who knows.”
“Ahhh,” the older Lois smiled, recalling a fond memory. “the monster truck convention. Good times.”
“In that case, I hope I make it back.”
“You’ll get back. Clark’ll figure this out. He always does.”
“Yeah.” Lois always had felt safe with Clark. It was one of the reasons she loved him. Then, she remembered. Somehow in all this confusion and excitement, Clark’s recent revelation had slipped her mind. “So,” she said, not sure how to broach this topic, even with herself, “about Clark.”
“What about Clark?”
“Well…I mean, about the alien thing.”
“You know about that?”
“Yeah, he just told me. Right before you guys showed up.”
“Huh. I didn’t know until last year.”
“Huh.” Then a thought struck her. “You think maybe somehow we changed things and that’s why this is happening?”
“I really have no idea.” And she felt more like a big sister than an older version of herself saying this, but she couldn’t help it, “But about Clark.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s still the same Clark he’s always been. I know right now he’s just told you he’s from another planet and there’s all this new information and it seems like you don’t him at all and that it’s really confusing but he’s still the same guy who you’ve always made fun of and who has always looked out for you and who still lets you call him ‘Smallville’. He’s a wonderful man and he’ll only get better. And he cares about you more than you know.”
The younger Lois looked at the woman in front of her. She spoke with so much passion and with so much reverence for Clark. Lois could hardly believe that she was looking at herself. She seemed somehow much more grown up than she could ever imagine really being. And she seemed to believe in Clark so whole-heartedly. There was none of the sort of joking about Clark she was used to here; this was completely serious.
But Clark himself was coming into the kitchen now. From the shirt he was wearing, it was clear that it was the younger one. “Come on, Lois,” he said, looking at his contemporary, “we’re going to have you meet my father.”
First chapter.
Fandom: Smallville
Pairing: Clark/Lois, probably others later
Rating: We'll say T for brief language and violence
Spoilers: through 8x05, Committed.
Disclaimer: I don't own Smallville or Superman or these characters, I'm not making any money here, etc. etc.
Summary: Clark and Lois have to say the world, but to do it they'll need to confront their future together.
Note: Thank you so much to everyone who commented on chapter one. I wasn't expected all that much when I posted it and it's really great to know that people are enjoying it so far. I'm sorry this chapter is a little delayed, but I've been really busy this week. Since I'm a student, I don't know if I'll be able to promise really quick updates, but I'll do my best to at least keep there from being huge gaps between updates.
This chapter was a little more difficult for me to write because I seem to have wandered straight into a logistical nightmare that won't be going away if I continue to follow my plan for this story (such as it is). But I hope the writing has suffered any for it. And thanks again to
svgurl for betaing this. :DEnjoy!
Chapter 2
The barn finally faded back into view.
“What the hell was that, Smallville?” Lois demanded. She had no idea what had just happened so she figured Clark must. He was, after all, the one with the cupboard full of weird stuff like the disc she was still holding in her hand.
But he just looked at her with just as confused an expression on his face as the one on hers. “I have no idea.”
“I mean—what was that? One minute we’re standing in your loft and the next we’re in the middle of Metropolis and everyone is dead and then we’re in some weird tunnel of light and some creepy voice is talking—” Clark chucked at that succinct summation of Jor-El. “What?” she demanded sharply
Clark shook his head, not sure if he wanted to go there. But it was all about to come out one way or another. “Nothing,” he said “it’s just that that was my father.”
“Your father?” Lois was looking at him like he had two heads. “Clark…I don’t know exactly how to put this delicately, but…your father’s—well, he’s dead.”
Clark’s grin was both wry and sad. “No, no. This is my other dead father.”
Lois stared at him blankly, as if to say Smallville, you have clearly lost it. Clark thought that maybe they better sit down. He motioned to the couch and they both sat. Lois looked at Clark expectantly; she knew he was about to come clean.
Clark hesitated and took a deep breath. “Okay. Well…I guess that if you saw inside that cupboard you know that there’s a lot more going on around here than I’ve let you in on.” Lois nodded, her eyes never leaving his. She could tell he was uncomfortable. Without thinking about it, she reached over and took his hand, silently telling him that it alright to go on.
Unable to bring himself to actually look her in the eye as he said this—why was it so hard to come out with this? He hadn’t had this issue with Chloe or Pete or even Lana—Clark fixed his gaze on his lap and continued. “I’m not from around here, Lois.” He glanced up at her; she looked nonplussed. “I mean, I’m not from this planet, I’m not from this galaxy…I’m from a planet called Krypton.” Now he looked fully up into her eyes. Obviously, that was not at all what she was expecting hear. She looked a little startled but squeezed his hand encouragingly and he went on. “I came with the meteors. Or the meteors came with me. The first time.”
“Why?” She sounded shocked and confused, but she was holding it together surprisingly well.
“Krypton’s gone now. It blew up. I’m all that’s left of it. My father—that voice—he sent me here so I wouldn’t die with the rest of them.”
“Oh my God. Clark…”
“There’s more.” He didn’t need her to feel sorry for him; that’s not what this was about. He just needed to get through this, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish if she started getting all apologetic. “I can… do things.”
He was about to go on to explain about his abilities, but it looked like the universe had different plans for Lois and Clark.
A couple was bounding up the stairs, fully engrossed in each other and presumably getting to the couch which Lois and Clark were currently sitting on. At first, Clark couldn’t figure out what the hell it was they were doing in his barn. Then he realized. The couple who had yet to notice Lois and Clark’s presence were in fact Lois and Clark themselves. He just stared, not quite believing what he was seeing, unable to get the words out to alert them to the fact that they were not alone.
The currently-on-the-verge-of-copulating version of Lois and Clark finally noticed that the loft was already occupied. Lois screamed. Both of them.
For a minute, the two pairs just stared at each other in complete shock.
“What the hell are you doing in my barn?” the new Clark demanded.
“Well, I thought it was my barn” his counterpart answered, then added as he looked around, “it is my barn!” He was just so perplexed. It was by far the weirdest experience he had ever had. And he was Clark Kent; he’d had a lot of weird experiences. Trying to make sense out of it all, he asked dumbly “who are you?”
“I’m Clark Kent.”
“Well, you can’t be. Because I’m Clark Kent.” But it was apparent just by looking at them that somehow they were both Clark Kent. There was a steady stream of light coming in from the widow, proving that the phantom that had impersonated Clark could not have made a return visit. And if they weren’t impervious to pain they’d have both been getting raging headaches right about then.
But Lois was looking at her own counterpart. Her hair reached only just below the shoulders, not the way she was accustomed to wearing it. “What did you do to your hair?”
“What’d you mean?” her counterpart asked, clearly just as confused.
“It’s too short.”
The second Clark glanced sharply at the Lois he hadn’t entered with. A few pieces seemed to click. “What year is it?” he asked.
Lois was incredulous. “What kind of a question is that? It’s 2008, obviously.”
“No it isn’t.” the newer Lois seemed to be catching on to whatever her Clark was getting at. “It’s 2010.”
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” the Lois who had woken up that morning in 2008 exclaimed. “First we get transported to Metropolis and it’s some weird vision of the end of the world, then we’re sent into the future? This is ridiculous!”
But her contemporary Clark shook his head. “I think we just never went all the way back to where we came from originally” he posited.
“What are you guys talking about?” 2010’s Clark asked. “You were transported to the end of the world in Metropolis?”
“We were standing in this loft, well, in 2008,” the other Clark explained. “Lois was holding the key and then I touched it too and suddenly we’re in Metropolis and everyone’s dead. And I mean everyone. At first I didn’t realize that we’d time traveled but I’ve just remembered—there was a copy of the Planet on the street. It said it was April 23, 2037. And Lex was there. But it wasn’t Lex, it was Zod; he must have been possessing Lex again.”
“So,” Lois was trying to make sense of all the new information she had been bombarded with in the last ten minutes, “we just traveled in time.”
Her Clark looked a little uncomfortable. “I mean, I guess so. Either that, or someone is playing a very bad, very elaborate trick on us.”
“So you were in Metropolis in 2037 and now you’re here in Smallville 2010 but ten minutes ago you were here in 2008?” the other Clark clarified.
“Well—first we were in the cave. Jor-El said we had to stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Well, all of us dying, I guess. Zod taking over the world. You know, the usual.”
The Lois of 2010 thought maybe the two Clark’s better figure this out by themselves, this was a little out of the Loises’ jurisdiction. “Hey, Lois, why don’t we let them talk this over, okay? Are you hungry?”
The other Lois was new at this, but could see that she definitely wasn’t helping here. Besides, who could pass up the opportunity to have a heart to heart with themselves from the future? “Yeah, okay.” The two women left the loft, leaving Clark and Clark by themselves.
For a minute, they just stared at each other; neither quite being able to get over how weird this was for them.
“So,” the younger Clark started, “you and Lois?”
“Yeah, we’ve been dating for about six months now.”
“Wow.”
“Oh, come on. I know you’ve thought about it.”
“Well, yeah. But not seriously, I mean—it’s Lois.”
“She likes you too, you know.”
Clark smiled, remembering the week before with the psycho and the lie detector and Lois’ lame attempt to get out of her admission later. “I know. So she knows?”
“About the alien thing? Yeah. I told her last year.”
“Last year? But I was just in the middle of explaining things to her a minute ago before we were, uh, interrupted.”
“So, you guys are like…changing history?”
“Well, do remember going to 2037 two years ago? Besides, I think changing history’s the whole point. Jor-El said we had to ‘stop it.’ That would be a change, right?
“This is really weird, huh?”
“Really weird.”
They needed to get over the strangeness of it all. There was obviously something wrong going on here and they needed to fix it. The older Clark started off. “Okay, so what exactly did Jor-El say?”
“Just that Lois and I had to stop it. But how are we supposed to stop something that’s thirty years in the future?”
“By warning me. So I’ll know what’s coming. So I can stop it.”
The younger Clark was a little disappointed by this. The version of himself standing before him was slightly older and slightly more experienced and he had Lois Lane. And now this new version of himself was going to take over a mission that Jor-El had at first given to him. He was jealous of himself. This wasn’t going to get any less weird any time soon, was it? Clark looked at his older self. It was the same face and the same clothes but somehow this guy was more self-assured. He had more of a presence. Was it Lois that had caused this change? “No,” he said, “Jor-El stepped in a brought me here. He said we had to stop it. Lois and me. Not you. There has to be something more to it.”
The other Clark looked at him like he knew exactly what was going on in his head. And Clark figured he probably had a pretty good idea.
+ + +
Meanwhile, Lois Lane was getting to know Lois Lane.
“I can’t get over how weird this is!” The older woman gushed. “I mean, you’re me! And I’m you! But you’re me from like a year and a half ago!” A thought struck her. “What story are you working on?”
“I’m about to go on assignment in Lubbock in a few days. Or, you know. I was. Now I’m here, so who knows.”
“Ahhh,” the older Lois smiled, recalling a fond memory. “the monster truck convention. Good times.”
“In that case, I hope I make it back.”
“You’ll get back. Clark’ll figure this out. He always does.”
“Yeah.” Lois always had felt safe with Clark. It was one of the reasons she loved him. Then, she remembered. Somehow in all this confusion and excitement, Clark’s recent revelation had slipped her mind. “So,” she said, not sure how to broach this topic, even with herself, “about Clark.”
“What about Clark?”
“Well…I mean, about the alien thing.”
“You know about that?”
“Yeah, he just told me. Right before you guys showed up.”
“Huh. I didn’t know until last year.”
“Huh.” Then a thought struck her. “You think maybe somehow we changed things and that’s why this is happening?”
“I really have no idea.” And she felt more like a big sister than an older version of herself saying this, but she couldn’t help it, “But about Clark.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s still the same Clark he’s always been. I know right now he’s just told you he’s from another planet and there’s all this new information and it seems like you don’t him at all and that it’s really confusing but he’s still the same guy who you’ve always made fun of and who has always looked out for you and who still lets you call him ‘Smallville’. He’s a wonderful man and he’ll only get better. And he cares about you more than you know.”
The younger Lois looked at the woman in front of her. She spoke with so much passion and with so much reverence for Clark. Lois could hardly believe that she was looking at herself. She seemed somehow much more grown up than she could ever imagine really being. And she seemed to believe in Clark so whole-heartedly. There was none of the sort of joking about Clark she was used to here; this was completely serious.
But Clark himself was coming into the kitchen now. From the shirt he was wearing, it was clear that it was the younger one. “Come on, Lois,” he said, looking at his contemporary, “we’re going to have you meet my father.”
First chapter.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-30 04:47 pm (UTC)I thought I had sent you a response to your last text, but I didn't.
I figured it out, lol.
♥